In 2016, for the LED lighting industry, it is still a cycle of difficulties and opportunities.
Most SMEs are shrinking the front line, and large companies rely on the capital market to “call the wind and rainâ€. Of course, there are still some companies that are thinking about the infinite possibilities of LED future.
But at least for now, plant lighting is a viable direction. Since 2015, some plant factories of a certain scale have been built and put into use in various provinces, of which LED plant lighting has a dominant share.
Recently, Chris Dixon, a well-known investor in Silicon Valley, pointed out 11 areas of the future's most promising technology industry, including automated indoor planting.
Indoor farms have become a viable alternative to traditional outdoor farms due to advances in technologies such as solar, sensors, LED lighting, robotics and artificial intelligence. Compared to traditional farms, automated indoor farms use 10 times less land and water. And depending on the weather, crops can be harvested multiple times a year without the use of pesticides.
Multinational company's advance layout
Recently, Philips Lighting announced the testing activities of the company and two Japanese vertical farms. These two vertical farms in Japan use Philips' plant LED lighting. Consumers in Tokyo have been highly acquainted with lettuce grown on vertical farm Innovatus Inc., using LED plant lighting, pesticide-free, and no need to rinse.
“There are more and more consumers in Japan who are tempted to buy a variety of foods with high quality flavor, safety and high nutritional value, of course, at a reasonable price. Vertical farms are an ideal way to achieve these needs, because vertical farms can directly The development of highly urbanized areas is successful, even if space is limited.
“Philips' first commercial vertical lighting project was launched at Osaka University in 2014. Today, Japan is one of the fastest growing markets for global plant LED lighting systems.
Working with Japanese farmers also helped Philips Lighting improve the installation and light configuration of LED lighting, enabling Philips products to better meet the needs of the Japanese market. Udo van Slooten, director of plant lighting at Philips, said.
As a multinational company that continues to pay attention to the development of LED technology, OSRAM has formed a layout of the entire industry chain of epitaxial chips, LED devices, fluorescent materials and applications. In recent years, OSRAM has gradually focused its LEDs on the application level of plant lights to fully attack the agricultural market.
Based on the wavelengths required for plant lighting, OSRAM has introduced LED products with deep blue 450nm, red 660nm and far red 730nm. 730nm far red LED is a new product developed by Osram for plant lighting, which can control plants from germinating to The vegetative growth goes to the whole process of flowering. He was awarded the 2015 North American Lighting Exhibition Technology Innovation Award.
Jingdian has already taken the lead in plant lighting. In 2008, it has cooperated with international manufacturers. In order to meet the needs of customers and the market, the performance of the plant lighting related products of Jingdian has been steadily improved every year, and the revenue growth has been stable.
The plant lighting products supplied by Jingdian can be divided into two main product lines: “greenhouse fill light†and “all artificial light sourceâ€. In the past, plant lighting products were mainly traditional lighting sources, and have been gradually replaced by LED light sources. High-pressure sodium lamps for plant irradiation can be replaced by high-power LEDs, which can be replaced by small and medium-power LEDs.
According to different plants, different purposes and needs, the trend of LED plant lighting will adopt a combination of multiple wavelengths, giving full play to the advantages of LED: light quality adjustment is easy. For example, red LEDs with white LEDs, red LEDs with blue LEDs..., even introduce UV LEDs for plant lighting applications.
According to Liu Wenke, a researcher at the Institute of Agro-Environment and Sustainable Development of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, closed soilless cultivation tends to cause accumulation of self-toxic substances, while TiO2 photocatalytic degradation of root exudates and rice husk degradation in substrate nutrient solution product.
The sunlight contains only 3% of ultraviolet light, and the covering material of the facility, such as glass, is filtered out more than 60%, which cannot be used in the facility. The low temperature and low temperature of the vegetables in the off-season cultivation make the efficiency low and the stability is poor, which can not meet the factory production of facility vegetables. Demand.
It has been urgently developed to develop an artificial light TiO2 photocatalytic system suitable for use in horticultural soilless cultivation, especially for plant factories. UV LED is one of the solutions.
Compared with the layout of multinational companies, domestic LED plant lighting lamps are not the pillar products of enterprises in most related enterprises, but only some institutions and enterprises jointly promote the demonstration factories. Most enterprises are in other LED applications, such as Decoration, display, backlight, etc. as the main business, small-scale trial production of LED plant lighting products, the real LED plant lighting as the company's main business or system-level service providers almost no.
In general, due to the stage of market development, the competition among enterprises is not very fierce. Enterprises with technological advantages (including plant cultivation technology and LED core technology) will be in a very favorable position in the competition.
Whether downstream operators can make a profit or not
However, with the reduction of LED cost and the maturity of LED lighting cultivation technology in the future, competition in the industry will become increasingly fierce.
Of course, another obstacle facing the company is the profitability of the downstream plant factory operators.
According to experts from Japan, the global LED plant growth lamp is expected to be around US$300 million in 2017, and the Chinese plant factory is expected to reach 10 times the size of the Japanese plant factory in the future. In addition, the demand for light, seedling (plant) tissue culture, edible fungi, microalgae, facilities for livestock and poultry and aquaculture, and vertical agriculture is also huge.
But after decades of development, the plant factory does not seem to meet expectations - industry insiders say that even in Japan, where automated planting technology is leading, about 70% of plant factories are not profitable.
However, the Japanese government is increasing investment in the agricultural sector. Many well-known Japanese electronics companies such as Panasonic, Fujitsu, and Toshiba are also involved in this emerging industry. They hope that through technological innovation, they will be more competitive with traditional agriculture. A new generation of plant factories.
According to a recent report by Forbes magazine, Song Yezheng, manager of marketing and business planning at Matsushita, said at the greenhouse gardening and plant factory exhibition held in Tokyo last week that about 70% of the plant factories in Japan are currently not available. Profit, he personally believes that this figure should be close to 90%.
The statement of pine leaves has been recognized by other exhibitors. If it is not subsidized by the government, the operators of many plant factories may have already been eliminated. Given that Japan is considered to be one of the leaders in plant plant technology, it is conceivable that plant factories in other parts of the world survive with the help of the government.
According to incomplete statistics, there are currently more than 80 plant factories in China. The industry believes that this technology will make a difference in the context of the frequent shortage of Chinese people, droughts and floods, and frequent pests and diseases. Moreover, China's per capita vegetable consumption is lower than in the West, which means that the potential market is vast.
However, plant factories are still mainly in the research stage, and product prices are the biggest constraint for large-scale commercialization. The cost of vegetables produced by LED plant factories is more than one yuan, which is more expensive than organic pollution-free vegetables on the market. In addition, plant factory facilities are expensive, with an investment of several thousand to 10,000 yuan per square meter.
In this regard, technicians focus on reducing costs and focus on cultivating high value-added products.
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